Google Translate, and several other online service, are getting really good at breaking down the language barrier online. You can direct translate web pages, or just words and phrases. As they get better, those Translate buttons on blog posts will be less of a novelty and more of a too, at least potentially.

Watching the updates to Google Translate, it got me thinking about where we might end up in the future. The language barrier is less and less of a barrier, and a lot of content is available if you just know to look for it, through the lens of services such as Google Translate perhaps, but still – it is content that might be beneficial to you.

It goes the other way around too. There are potential readers out there that might not fully understand the language you’re writing in. Taking it one step further, thanks to translation services, you can link content in your own language and supply a direct link to a translated version of that content, and suddenly it works internationally.

I predict that the importance of translation services will grow over the coming years. We’ll use it more, rely on them, and open up new worlds of content thanks to their existence. That’s a good thing.

The automated services and plugins are still pretty rudimentary, despite a lot of improvement recently. Icanlocalize.com are pretty good- if expensive, although I’ve found if you are just doing a single blog- it’s best to find someone privately, as we have with our BH Japan version: jp.blogherald.com. Btw, if there are any English-Mandarin translators out there, please do make contact with the BH team!

This is true. That is a service that is offered that is quite popular these days. Though if you need high quality document translations, especially when it comes to legal documentation, getting a professional document translation company is the best way to do it.

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